I'm surprised I have not posted on this in much detail in the past but anyway...

The next version of the Hosted messaging and Collaboration solution is called HMC 4 and will be predominantly based on Exchange 2007.

Therefore if you are interested in getting into the HMC market then its probably worth while getting a good understanding of Exchange 2007?

You can download the beta at www.microsoft.com/exchange

I would suggest you also start to get familiar with SharePoint 2007.

As you can imagine there is going to be a LOT of marketing and advertising being spent on Vista, Office 2007 and Exchange come launch time. Therefore if you are in the hosting market why don't you try to align any launch plans you have with the overall launch of the core products and then share in some the buzz that will hopefully be created.

Back to HMC 4 for a second. There is going to be some new compelling value propositions that you can sell to SME's with Exchange 2007. One I particular like is the new voicemail and voice control features built into Exchange 2007.

Just imagine for a second you are on the road as a employee in a smb and you need to keep in sync with your team and customer engagements. You are in the car and you call up your hosted Exchange service, which reads your next upcoming meeting to you. You then realise that the traffic is bad so you tell the hosted calendar that you are running late and want to shift the meeting back by 30 minutes. It will even send an email to the attendees with a note and updated meeting request! All from a phone call!

 Get playing with Exchange 2007 in preperation for HMC 4!